Interfaith Insight - 2020
Permanent link for "Remembering three who departed this past year" by Doug Kindschi on December 29, 2020
As we close the 2020 year, I remember three persons who in various
ways have influenced me and have passed from our world and from my
life this year.
Seymour Padnos I knew the longest, going back nearly 40 years. In
the 1980s, while serving as dean of science at Grand Valley State
University, he showed interest in the new engineering program that we
had established. He was CEO of the Louis Padnos Iron & Metal
Company, a company focused on recycling. It was founded by his father
who had emigrated from Russia as a teenager. Seymour Padnos had come
to me with a concern that most products are designed on the basis of
cost, function, and aesthetics, but with little thought on how the
product would be recycled after its serviceable life. Together we
came up with the plan to sponsor a national competition to encourage
engineering students to submit design plans that would enable
efficient recycling. Seymour and I traveled together to a number of
events when "Product Design for Recyclability Awards” were presented.
Padnos along with his wife Esther had made significant
contributions to Grand Valley toward the sciences and engineering. In
the 1990s the engineering school was named for them, and in 1996 the
Seymour and Esther Hall of Science was dedicated. Former President
Gerald Ford was a part of that event and both Seymour and Esther
Padnos were given honorary degrees.
Padnos was well-known for his love of sailing, and after the CEO
position was passed on to the next generation, I would often see him
while visiting my father in Florida during the university’s spring
break. On several occasions he would graciously have me join him for a
bit of sailing in the Palm Beach area where he wintered. After his
return to Michigan in late spring, I always looked forward to joining
him in Holland for lunch and enjoyable conversation. While our first
contacts were around science and engineering, I also got to know more
about his Jewish faith and his early involvement with
promoting interfaith understanding and acceptance. In 2018, the
Kaufman Institute was pleased to honor him with
our Interfaith Leadership Award.
His gentle spirit, inquiring mind, and his commitment to living
out his faith will always stay with me as I cherish this relationship
that ended this past July, just a few months before his 100th
birthday.
Luis Tomatis was born, educated, and received his medical
training in Argentina. He came to Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit for
further training in thoracic and cardiovascular surgery in 1956, and
then to Grand Rapids in 1965 where he became a well-known and
respected heart surgeon for 30 years. I got to know him personally
following his retirement from medicine when he became the founding
president of the Van Andel Institute. In 1996, his first year as VAI
president, he attended the Padnos Hall of Science dedication and I
took him and his young grandson on a tour of the new building. Over
the years we became friends and I had the privilege of serving on one
of the Van Andel advisory boards. While I was dean of science I was
also able to sponsor him to receive an honorary Doctor of Science
degree at one of the university convocations.
Later, after he became the director of medical affairs for the
DeVos family, we continued our friendship and began meeting for lunch
nearly every month as he continued to work until his death this past
summer at age 92. We often talked about his medical work, science
interests, and commitment to building an outstanding medical community
in Grand Rapids. His impact on our community will be felt for decades
to come. In 2005, Luis founded the DeVos Medical Ethics Colloquy,
which sponsors a major forum twice yearly bringing noted speakers and
experts to Grand Rapids to explore significant issues in medical ethics.
As my own career moved to the arena of interfaith, I was pleased
to work with him on the colloquy board on planning these ethics
conferences. This coming February the Kaufman Interfaith Institute
will collaborate with the Colloquy on the topic of Religion and
Health. In my discussions with Dr. Tomatis, I also became more
appreciative of his deep Catholic faith as well as his interest and
appreciation of all faith communities.
Jonathan Sacks, former chief rabbi of Great Britain, died in
November this year at age 72 following a recent cancer diagnosis. His
impact on me was primarily from his writings, videos, and talks. On
one of my appointments at Cambridge University, I did, however, get to
meet him and hear him lecture. He was a wonderful speaker and his
videos are very inspiring, but it is his books that have had the
greatest impact on me and my thinking.
From my science interests and career, I found his book “The Great
Partnership: God, Science, and the Search for Meaning” very insightful
in my own decades of exploring the science and religion relationship.
His earlier book, “The Dignity of Difference: How to Avoid the Clash
of Civilizations,” published in 2003, became a powerful response to
the alternative view following 9/11 that our global problem was
primarily a religious worldview clash. Readers of this column will
notice that I have quoted Sacks frequently and wrote about his latest
book, “Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times,” in an
Insight soon after learning of his untimely death.
In 2016 he received the Templeton Prize and, in his talk, noted
that many of the problems we face are in fact global, and yet we have
no effective functioning global organizations. He spoke of “a sense
among many throughout the world that the world is changing almost too
fast to bear, with no clear sense of direction, or purpose, or
meaning,” and asked that religions play an important role. The
world’s major religions are global and “are actually our most powerful
extant global organizations, much more so than any nation state.” He
continued by suggesting that they “provide what contemporary Western
societies do not provide, which is a sense of personal worth
regardless of wealth.” Furthermore, religions create and sustain a
sense of identity while also promoting strong communities. Finally, he
stated, “Religion is left at the end of the day as the single most
compelling answer to those three eternal questions: who am I, why am I
here, how then shall I live?”
Rabbi Sacks has been for me that clear voice reminding us that,
in spite of our differences, we are all created in God’s image, even
though -- or especially when -- the other is “not in my image, even
though his color, culture, class, and creed are different from mine.”
As I reflect on this past year with all of the problems we have
faced as a nation and in the whole world, I am thankful that these
three individuals have given me solace and direction. Their personal
presence will be missed but their influence will continue in the
coming years.
Seymour Padnos
Luis Tomatis
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks